Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

A cursor is similar to a table or a view: it represents, within a procedure, a results set that is retrieved one row at a time using this statement. You first establish a cursor with the DECLARE statement. Then you use the OPEN statement to initialize the cursor. The FETCH statement retrieves the next row of the cursor and places the data retrieved into one or more variables. There should be the same number of variables as there are columns in the underlying SELECT statement of the cursor. Variables are given in a comma-separated list. Each execution of FETCH advances the pointer for the cursor by one row. Once all rows have been fetched, an SQLSTATE of 02000 is returned. You can tie a condition to this state through a DECLARE statement and end fetches based on the condition. Use the CLOSE statement to close a cursor.